Joe Stickley's Blue Print
Smoke Leaves Town
Peola Records
By Al Kaufman
Joe Stickley examines this American life as only a Midwesterner can. Backed by a group that can hold together a rag-tag melody like great Americana bands such as Wilco and The Gourds can, Stickley examines love, loss, and life in subtle, graceful ways.
Smoke Leaves Town sloppily shuffles along at a pace that will make many a Wilco or Grateful Dead fan take heart. It opens with "Davy," a beautiful ode to a dead friend driven along by a wood block beat. He remembers happier days and questions as his departed friend as to what life is like now that he is dead. It ends up more contemplative than depressing.
Stickley thinks the thoughts that we all think about life, but do not know how to eloquently put into words. He questions the meaning of life on numerous tracks, without once becoming maudlin, and searches out the little joys, using isolated experiences as metaphors for the human condition.
His stories are rich and beautiful, but they would be nothing without his music. Sean Cana's mandolin always seems to enter at just the right places, while his guitar ignites "Sittin' by the Fire," which recalls Jack White when he worked with Loretta Lynn. Steven Carrel's banjo makes "Come Down Missouri," while Cindy Woolf's little girl twang duets nicely with Stickley's on "La La Yee," a playful little love song that would fit right in in Woodie Guthrie's catalog.
Without one single weak track, this is quite possibly the best Americana album of the year. At the very least, with his third CD Stickley has established himself as someone to watch in the very near future.
